On the radio the other day George Bush justified his stubborn "I'm the President, You're Glue, Whatever You Say, I'm Going to Veto" stance by saying this:

"I believe strongly that politicians in Washington should not be telling generals how to do their job."

Set aside the grammatical error, remove the word "generals," and put in the word "teachers."

Then consider that Bush's Stupid Plan For Education Reform (also known as the Public Education Isn't Profitable, So Let's Privatize It By Making It Fail! Plan) says that every child has to pass a state standardized exam by 2014. Every child. That includes the special education students, even the ones who are not mainstreamed. That includes the English Language Learners, even the ones who just got here two weeks ago. That includes the ones who only set things on fire, including standardized tests.

It irritates me sometimes that everyone who went to high school thinks that they know how to do my job. I drive a car, but I couldn't fix one or build one. I have two parents, but I'm sure as hell not ready to be one myself, and I've been to the dentist a lot. I could not fix your cavity.

I got an e-mail forward this week called No Dentist Left Behind. It was a satirical one (with a misleading title, but stick with me) about a "new law" that states that every child must be 100% cavity-free by 2014. "But I can't control for environmental factors, socioeconomic status, how much the children or their parents care about dental care!" cries the hapless dentist. "Those are just excuses. What, you don't want our children to be healthy?" comes the inevitable response.

Yet here comes George W Bush, time after time, with the transparent and hypocritical accusations of "political grandstanding"by the Democrats. Pretending to be a Republican when he's expanded federal government powers to an alarming degree. Coming into my classroom with his C+ average and telling me, the teacher, how to do my job.

I've just spent my first two nights in my new apartment. It has lots of southern-facing windows. Imagine my delight when I realized that the bathroom has the perfect light for tweezing the hairs out of my chin! Then, imagine my horror when I realized that I truly was delighted about that.

It was one of those intense girl friendship in which we did everything together. She tried out for the play because I was going to, and we regularly slept over at each other's houses. I was fascinated by her huge house on a new development, with a big foyer and a special tap for boiling water. She loved the way my 100-year old house was tucked into the forest, and the fact that I got along so well with my parents.

Kate told me that her dad hit her. She also said that she coughed up blood, and that she was going to kill herself. She told me this over curly fries in the food court of the mall. She said it would be better that way, that she just wanted to say goodbye, and of course, I wasn't to tell anyone any of it.

I was a good girl and a good student. I didn't cheat in school and I pretty much told my mother everything. But the good girl persona came with the conviction that I could handle anything, and so I didn't tell. I spent hours on the phone with Kate each night, making her promise that I would see her the next morning in school. And every morning, I was glad--and relieved--to see her.

I don't remember how I first became friends with Kate. My best friend Jenny had died earlier that year, and somewhere in the grieving process Kate became the one who held my hand.

Kate had "heroes." She wrote their names on her bedroom mirror with Wite-Out. They were all girls, and Kate talked about them incessantly. When we were in the same room as one--the lead in the school play--Kate got red-faced, breathed hard, and couldn't talk.

At the end of that year Kate started hanging out more with another girl: Cate with a C. With Cate she did drugs and scratched her wrists, showing me later in health class, proudly, after we weren't really friends anymore. The year before it had been our friend Shannon and the year after a girl named Rebecca; the two of them dated basketball players and got tattoos.

A few years ago someone told me that they had seen Kate at the mall. She looked "more like a lesbian than ever." I'm not sure quite what that means, but I think I can picture it. During senior year, Diane told me that I had been one of Kate's "heroes." I remembered a breathless note Kate wrote me once about how I was "beautiful, breathtaking." I felt naive.

This week at school we had a mandatory staff meeting about suicide prevention. We watched an inane video aimed at students about what you should do if someone tells you that they are considering suicide. In reenactments, concerned actors way too old for their roles confessed to adults they trusted.

I remembered my innocent 10th-grade self, so trusting of adults but completely unwilling to confide this to them. I thought of how manipulative Kate was, how lonely, and how isolated I became in her crises, real or not. It's so easy to tell them they can trust us, so easy to imagine that their pain is less complex, somehow, because they are young.